


To Ribbons

by pretty_mr_sanders (shipit)



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dark, Gore, Self Harm, Violence, kinda prose-y, liberal description of anatomy, self mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-06-23 06:22:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15600222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipit/pseuds/pretty_mr_sanders
Summary: Virgil can't control himself.





	To Ribbons

**Author's Note:**

> read the tags.
> 
> By proceeding, you're consenting to graphic content. Don't harass me because you didn't like what you were warned about.

It always happens so quickly. The world is overwhelming in the way it bears down against his skull like shards of glass raining from the sky. Every sound is too loud. Every light is too bright. Every smell too pungent, taste top bitter, sensation on his skin like needles jabbing into his flesh. Virgil needs to find a way to make the crawling sensation leave his boiling blood. Energy fizzles relentlessly in every cell of his body and he’s at the point where he’ll do anything to make it stop. It has to stop. He wants to claw off his damn skin and leave his body, anything to make it all go away.

Behind the locked door of his room, there is no one to help him or hurt him. He’s alone with the bogeymen that live inside his mind, screeching at him demonic wails that make him clutch at his head and make a hoarse shout. Their incessant noise doesn’t help him calm down and stop wanting to completely void his physical existence.

His clothes are too heavy and he shreds them, ripping them apart so that they settle around his body and he’s left to stare only at his pale skin rippled with scars from past attacks. Some are uglier than others, but all of them have to go. His whole room is purple and black and dark and he needs red. Red, red like Roman’s sash and Valerie’s lipstick and the paint that comes from crescents where he digs his fingernails into his thighs. That’s always how it starts; under control, or so he tells himself when he rakes his nails from above his knees to just below his hips. Angry pink lines follow, but it’s not enough. He can still feel the buzzing in each nerve ending. 

Virgil makes a sightless grab at the remains of his jacket for the ornate knife he thinks was a gift from Roman a couple of Christmases ago. The filigreed blade and jeweled handle are too elegant for what he’s going to use it for, not that he cares. Appearances mean nothing anymore. He runs his index finger along the razor-sharp blade, pleased at the bead of blood that wells up like a ruby in its own right. The glimmer is prettier, he thinks, than that of an actual gemstone, because this tastes like copper when he licks his finger clean.

For some reason, he holds his breath as he crawls over to his mirrored closet door and holds his knife up to his face. There are faint scars at the corners of his mouth from where he tried this once before as a child. He’s always been fucked up, he thinks. This isn’t new, but it still burns like it’s new when he fits the pointed blade into his mouth with the sharp edge against his cheek. Part of him, the last shred of rationality, tells him to shut his eyes. Better yet, stop. But a bigger part, the part currently manic with unwanted energy, demands he keep his bloodshot eyes open and watch.

Sudden sharp pain drags along with the knife as he forces a half smile into his face. Reflex tears begin to drip down and burn at the injury. Blood runs more freely watered down by his crying, creating pretty paths that trail to his neck. Virgil repeats the action on the other side to make it even. It isn’t even, really, with the left side curving deeper and ending higher than the right. He runs his tongue along the gashes inside his mouth after he removes his knife and nods slowly to himself. This has quieted the restlessness in his veins somewhat, but not enough. Not yet.

He brings the knife to his legs next, still angry at the ministrations of his long fingernails. With the concentration one might expect from a scientist, he places the point of the knife against one of the lines and presses in. In, in, in until he counters resistance he can’t push past. It hurts, it hurts so much, but he can’t stop. His hands shake a little as he traces the line all the way up. This cut bleeds much more than his face, as well as being darker and thicker. Not that it matters, he can’t die. Virgil rolls his shoulders back and deepens the second scratch too. He carries on, making a point to get every line so that ten furrows drool blood down his legs. It’s still not enough. He can still feel that tremor in his whole body, not yet sated with the destruction.

Next to feel the wrath of the rapidly staining metal is his stomach. Once it was soft, nourished like the rest of his body from Patton’s cooking, but in his spiral it has fallen concave beneath the bony bumps of his ribs. He forces a dark ‘x’ into it, enjoying the way tissue-paper, near-translucent skin parts for the knife like butter. More blood, enough to pool around him, but he can’t die. Death cannot and never will rescue him from the hell he puts himself through. 

All this mess, all this pain, all this fury and it’s not satisfying. In a last ditch effort, he takes a deep breath and plunges the knife into his sternum with a sickening crack. The air rushes from his lungs. Slowly, Virgil drags the knife down and opens his chest until he can discard the blade and reach into his own body. Warm. Wet. Not buzzing like his brain wants him to believe. He closes his fingers around a rib and pulls until it cracks and dislodges from his spine and sternum. Somehow, he manages not to make a sound as he pulls it out of his body. That burns, but he feels lighter without the bloody bone to weigh him down. Virgil does it again, pulling another rib out. If he does this enough times, maybe he’ll stop buzzing. He keeps going, keeps dragging out his ribs until there’s nothing left and his chest is like a deflated balloon with unprotected internal organs pressing in against each other. 

His heart. Maybe if he rips out his heart, this can be over. Virgil squeezes his eyes shut and reaches his hand into his chest one final time. He finds his heart, which beats against his palm, struggling to do its job in the midst of the chaos he’s caused. For a millisecond he hesitates. Then the angry hive of bees living in his nerves take over and he ribs it out, still beating. His brain screams finally that something is wrong, but he doesn’t listen.

His blood hums on.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is @sunflower-sanders and my ko-fi is @renemae


End file.
